Portrait of AE (George W. Russell) (1867-1935), Poet

John Butler Yeats painted this portrait of the poet and mystic George W. Russell — known as AE — in 1903 for the National Gallery of Ireland. Russell was a central figure in the Irish Literary Revival: friend of W.B. Yeats, political journalist, and visionary who combined agrarian activism with theosophical mysticism. John Butler Yeats, father of the poet, was the finest portrait painter of the Revival generation, prized for his ability to render intellectual character. This portrait belongs to a remarkable series documenting the leading personalities of Irish cultural life at the turn of the century.

Yeats works in a broadly Impressionist idiom — loose, direct brushwork, warm tonal palette, and a relaxed informality of pose that conveys psychological openness. The face receives the most careful attention; background areas are handled sketchily to concentrate focus on the sitter.